Yes, but hopefully people have noticed the con this time.

Unlike Krugman, I'm not optimistic. It seems to me that identity politics, coupled with echo chamber news, have successfully cancelled any feedback for the Fox-consumers of Real America. Not only does the right get to make its own facts, those facts change according to the needs of the day. It's positively Soviet. For a fun example you can try at home, attempt to persuade Tea Party folks that Reagan didn't cut taxes and shrink gub'mint, or that TARP was a Bush program, or even that we can't sustain our bloated military with revenue at 8% of GDP.

One of the frightening aspects of such Orwellian revision is that in-group consensus trumps accuracy. The political memory of the electorate becomes short on a goldfish scale. The policy debates of the last election cycle are entirely forgotten; what matters is the constant threat to Team Real America from the Other Team. To boost team unity, specific boogeymen rotate with almost comic frequency. Boo! taxes. Boo! gays. Boo! Saul Alinsky. Boo! War on Xmas. Look, Muslims is coming to take our freedom!

Remember the debate where ALL of the Republican candidates refused a compromise of $1 in additional revenue for $10 in tax cuts? I imagine Grover Nordquist, the evil little felon, wet himself with joy. All this while most people don't know how much they pay in income tax, let alone what a graduated income tax structure is, or how much the tax code has changed since 1960 in favor of the super-rich. But taxes are a useful shorthand for what has become the central message of the hard right: no good can come of government, unless it's drone-bombing the sh*t out of some poor Enemies of America. Pay no attention while we strip away protections for workers and civil rights, and tear down the shreds of the social safety net. You're not one of those capitalism-hating nanny-staters, are you? Good. Knew we could count on you.

Now, in 2012, national politics is about branding, advertising, and conditioning. The left is mostly pretty bad at it. After the civil rights era (as though those issues are resolved!), we got too used to the idea that justice would prevail. We got lazy. We didn't notice half of America walling itself off, making its own version of events, biding its time.

Eventually things might get bad enough that the corporate wing of Team Real America decides to let the Nascar wing blow off some steam. Come that time, intellectuals, atheists, and libruls best watch out.